Industry Study: The Six Issue Areas
What the industry study asks you to do
The Industry Study section tests whether you can analyse a real manufacturing or construction enterprise through six lenses: structural, technical, environmental, sociological, personnel/industrial relations, and workplace safety. Learn the sub-questions for each lens. Structural covers ownership type (sole trader, partnership, company, cooperative), size classification, market segmentation, and the organisation chart. Technical covers production processes, plant and equipment, automation level, and the manufacturing system (job, batch, mass, or continuous). Environmental covers resource use, waste, pollution controls, and environmental management systems. Sociological covers the workforce profile, community impact, and changing social expectations. Personnel and industrial relations covers recruitment, training, awards and enterprise agreements, dispute resolution, and union involvement. Workplace safety covers hazard identification, risk control hierarchies, and legal duties.
Traps the markers set
The commonest trap is overlapping answers: a question asking for a sociological issue will not accept a description of an enterprise agreement, and a structural answer describing machinery scores nothing. Read the issue word in the question and stay inside it. Another trap is answering generically ("safety is important") rather than naming the specific enterprise, hazard, and control. A third is confusing environmental with sustainability in the broad sense; keep the answer on resource, emission, and waste impacts.
Rule of thumb
Use the PEC sentence: Point (name the issue category), Evidence (a specific example from the enterprise), Consequence (what it means for the business or workers). Three PEC sentences beat a paragraph of generalities.
Worked example
Question: Identify one personnel issue and explain its effect on the enterprise. Answer: "The enterprise relies on casual labour for peak season (point). This creates inconsistent skill levels and high induction costs (evidence). Productivity falls and rework rises during peaks (consequence)."